My SoCalled Life
by RavenRamsey
Summary: More than a decade later, where their lives are now.


**Chapter 1: Phone calls**

Brian Krakow opened his eyes.

He woke up to sunlight filtering through the blinds of the motel windows. It diffused the bright sunlight into a mute gray. Even before he reached over and picked up his watch he knew it was 7:30 am. It was the same time he had woken up since high school when classes started at 8:30 am.

He stared at his watch for a moment, not really seeing it. It was a nice watch, an Arnold and son True Moon. A ridiculously expensive time piece he had gotten the previous year after receiving a huge bonus for fixing a NASA software problem and winning his companies place as an outside contractor. It told the phases of the moon. People asked him constantly, one just last night actually, couldn't he just look out the window and see what the phases were? His wife at home taking care of his two kids liked to ask that a lot.

He had a second watch but didn't like to think about it.

This watch meant more than that though. Once he stopped using his telescope for the sole purpose of spying on Angela Chase for a few minutes every morning and night he realized that he liked astronomy, or at least that astronomy fit him. Even though the stars were totally predictable, sometimes you would see the streak of a meteor or the glimpse of a comet that wouldn't been seen for another hundred years. The stars were totally predictable and boring…until you actually took the time to get to know them. He had never told anyone just how much he thought his life was like the stars.

Like right now he was going over his day as he always did first thing in the morning. This part of his day was like the normal stars you saw every night... Taking a shower and having breakfast was his North Star and Ursa Major. Checking out of this motel and getting back home to his family was the Big Dipper and Orion. He checked off each item of his day right down to when he would probably roll into bed next to his wife that night even before he got out of this one.

That was the boring predictable galaxy of his life. There were few comets and shooting stars in it. Few, but not none.

The faint snores of the girl behind him proved that.

Though anybody would tell you Rayanne Graff was more like the extinction level asteroid out of Armageddon then any peacefully passing comet.

When he'd gone over his day he rolled naked out of bed, running hand through his short and stylish hair. He'd cut the mop top when he had started searching for a job, his parents saying it didn't look professional. They never agreed on anything so he cut it and was kinda glad. When he looked at his new short hair for the first time, parted on the side, he saw someone new. Someone older who hadn't had the crap beaten out of him cause he was smarter, who didn't do other peoples work out of a totally screwed up need to be liked.

For the first time he had seen a man.

When Rayanne Graff saw it she immediately shrieked and clawed it apart wailing about "the loss of the Brian locks."

He had slept with her for the first time that night

He had gotten his underwear and tan khakis on when she woke up with a sound between a yawn and a groan. And maybe a slight belch. Rayanne was talented in something's if nothing else.

She sat up and tousled her wild streaked hair, getting the rumpled look she would wear the rest of the day. She called it her "sex-bed-head". She was topless, her breasts lifting gently with her arms, swaying with her movements. While Krakow had never seen them in high school he was sure they were the exact same, firm, gentle slopes with tiny red nipples. It gave him a weird thrill to think that he was playing with teenage Rayanne's breasts when they were in bed together. It also depressed him sometimes when he thought of her as just teenage Rayanne at those times.

It wasn't hard to either, besides being a little darker from spending more time outside she looked pretty much the same more than a decade after graduation, like some freaking immortal siren that never got old and lured men by the _zayin_ to their deaths.

Watching her now Brian hated the fact he found himself getting hard so easily. But then she had always had that effect on him. If teenage Angela had held his heart, teenage Rayanne had his dick. A little known fact was that he had stroked off to Rayanne Graff more than the girl he was in love with next door.

"Hey, Krakow," A topless Rayanne purred while leaning back and thrusting her chest out. "Leaving so soon?"

"Some of us have things to do and can't lounge in bed all day," he tossed back, buttoning his pale blue shirt. He walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair. He didn't need a shower. He always showered right after sex. There was something about letting stuff dry on you that he had always found kinda gross

While he was gone Rayanne heaved a theatrical sigh and reached over to the table on her side of the bed. She sat cross legged and used the lighter she had grabbed to light a swirly green glass pipe. She dragged the left overs of the bud of weed in it and held the smooth smoke, bobbing her head to a beat in her head until she couldn't take it anymore and let it out. She exclaimed "oh", reaching over and shaking two empty tall cans of beer before she found that one that was about a quarter full. She remembered not killing it the night before!

She chugged it down and had just let out a loud belch as Brian came out of the bathroom, perfectly put together.

"Very nice." Condescension was an art form for Brian Krakow now. "Very lady like."

"Didn't seem to mind the un-lady like things I was doing last night," she said back, drawing on her pipe. "Have you always been so ticklish back there?"

He shot her a look that might have been acid if in liquid form but she barely noticed as she got up, still naked and went to the bathroom. She had many tattoos now, mostly single pieces like stars, pin-ups, her mother's name and any other cliché you could name. Nothing tied them together and it was painfully obvious all of them were done on a whim. Probably while drunk was Brian's guess. He watched her go, again hating how he got aroused so easily by her. He didn't think it was her being naked, yeah that was great but not it. Brian Krakow wasn't one to probe his psyche much, he had his parents for that and it took him awhile to realize what it was.

It was simply that Rayanne Graff moved the exact same whether she was dressed or naked. She had that kind of confidence and unselfconsciousness. She didn't seem to even have such a thing as boundaries really when it came to her body. As if to illustrate this he heard her starting to empty her bladder, very loudly and with the door open, as she hummed.

"Hey, Krakow," Rayanne yelled as if she wasn't ten feet away through an open door. "Have you talked to Angela lately?"

"No. She's your friend, why aren't you talking to her? Too busy getting kids hooked on crack?" Brian shot, zipping up his overnight bag.

"Hey," she yelled with an angry flush of the toilet. "I only sell weed and that's just too stupid stoners who are already fucked up." She came out (without washing her hands Brain noted) and flopped on the bed again. Brain's eyes were immediately drawn to her bare, shapely legs.

Rayanne caught it and gave a wicked smile. "You always did like my legs," she said stretching them out. Then she scissored them open wide, showing a heart shaved into her pubes and a closed slit. "Or is it just what's between 'em?"

Brian gave a disgusted sound and dug out his wallet. He counted out $500 and plopped it by her empty cans. He grabbed his bag and left without another word.

The playful smile on her face faded almost instantly. She sat up and reached over for the crisp bills, counting them out before tossing them carelessly on the bed next to her. She stared at the wall for only a few seconds before visibly shaking herself, saying "Get it together, Graff", leaning over to grab her oversized bag and dig for her MP3 player. She needed a distraction. Just as she opened it something inside started to buzz violently.

"Shit," she muttered, it might be Tino with some more product for her and he rarely left a message or rang twice. She was nearly out and needed to make some sales. She dug through her bag which was the size of some backpacks and started scattering debris from it. Bras, panties, wrappers, papers, pens and a snow globe landed on the bed before she found a pager and looked at the screen.

It was blank but the buzzing kept on going.

"Damn, wrong one," she muttered, reaching in again to pull out two more pagers and three cells before she found the one that was ringing. Unlike the others which were for "business" this one was her personal and had caller id. "A. Chase" was on the screen and she debated for a second before letting it go to voice mail. Now was not a "dealing with Angela" time.

Instead when it finished buzzing she dialed in a number.

Ricky Vasquez knew that violence did not solve problems.

To "fix his gay" people had pounded him into lockers, sidewalks, alleyway walls and on one occasion his home's kitchen counter. At his lowest points he had actually wished it had worked. People thought being gay was a choice, because yeah, people just line up to be targeted by every insecure douche with big fists and small brains. Not that they wouldn't have done it just for his penchant for flashy clothes, eyeliner and using the girls bathroom. Not that idiots needed a reason at all.

No, violence didn't "fix his gay", and he was sure that violence wouldn't solve his current situation but violence wasn't always about making someone else feel like shit but just about making yourself feel better. He admitted to himself that breaking his beloved clip board over a few actors' heads would really make him feel better.

Pittsburgh wasn't the art's mecca of the western world but Ricky Vasquez had been lucky enough (damn lucky with all the competition) to land the job as stage director at one of its few playhouses. In Ricky's mind it probably couldn't compete with even the smallest theatre on New York's Broadway, it was underfunded and in one place had an actual hole in the ceiling. But he considered it his. He and a few others kept it up and running with donations from the city and people who had more money than they had time to spend.

Ever since getting through his first production in high school, he knew this was where he wanted to be and couldn't think of anything else he wanted to do then work with these talented freaks who found the courage to stride across the stage and let a crowd see what was in their hearts. They acted their parts but after years of working with them Ricky knew that actors, the good ones, didn't hide in the role but bared their souls through it.

He loved them all and most called him "Papa (and not a few Mama) Ricky" even though he was barely in his thirties.

He loved them like the children he hoped someday to have. And like any parent that love with laced with the occasional impulse to smack them.

Right now he was dealing with the fact that most of the actors had decided to have a party the night before get so hammered they could barely function. His make-up/costume girl looked like she was on the verge of tears as she tried to get pouty and cranky adults into costume for a dress rehearsal for a play that went on in two days. Ricky was telling her everything was going to be perfectly fine when his cell rang in his pocket.

He pulled it out, telling her and her one frazzled assistant to focus on one player at a time if they had to, and saw "Rayanne" on his screen. He had once found out that she had "Rix the spix" for him on her phone and stopped talking to her until she changed it. He gave an exasperated smile and flipped it open.

"This better be good," Ricky huffed, now banging on doors and looking in corners for stray actors. "I mean somebody better've bloody died I'm so busy and can't talk."

"Ricky man, you need to chill," Rayanne said in her best stoner drawl. He heard rustling and assumed she was getting dressed at the same time out of that mobile dump she had the cheek to call a purse. She didn't even look when she reached in for clothes, saying "Everything matches".

"I'm trying to get fifteen hung-over actors ready for dress rehearsal." Ricky said in the faintest of British accents. They were doing a stripped down Les Miz and the cockney was sticking to him. Everywhere he went he seemed to find an actor and even a few stage hands sprawled on something, moaning "I wish I were dead". He resisted saying "I can make that a reality" as he ushered them back to their proper places. He found a good clot of them puking in the bathrooms.

"Half of them are puking, half refuse to come out of their rooms and the rest are still sodding drunk!" Ricky exclaimed when he saw his Fantine dancing topless in the left wing as she sang the Macarena.

"Really?" Rayanne said through a laugh. She still loved the chaos in any situation and Ricky's British just made it funnier. Ricky on the other hand could hear an undertone of scheming in Rayanne's laugh, which was never good. He could almost hear a Cha-Ching in her voice and knew what was coming. "You know that's more than a hundred percent, Vasquez?" she asked.

"Right now it seems like there's more than a hundred percent of them," Ricky said, his voice rising to a shout for a sober stage hand to get the backdrop straight,

"If they've been partying guess that means they need more weed. Just tell them I'll give them a discount if they stop harassing my fav gay." Rayanne offered in a "just occurred to me" voice as if she hadn't been thinking about it already. The clothes rustling had stopped. Rayanne had somehow gotten dressed without ever taking the phone from her ear. If nothing else Rayanne Graff was talented in something, Ricky thought.

Ricky who had been spending all morning trying to corral the drunken cats that called themselves actors thought to hell with it and actually yelled Rayanne's idea.

Ricky watched as actors and crew emerged into the hateful light to ask if he meant it. He assured everyone that Rayanne had many faults but she never lied about weed. People shuffled off to where they were supposed to go. Ricky wasn't that surprised. He rarely ever smoked himself but when he did it was always Rayanne's, meaning Tino's, stuff.

As things started to get back into order he said into the phone "Thanks, Rayanne. You saved the day, or at least my job from when I started killing people."

"You can thank me by letting me crash on your couch tonight. Gotta be somewhere in the Pitts tomorrow," she said, going on as if he had agreed. "And killing people? Little old Buddhist you?" He heard a door close and guessed she was heading out from wherever she had been the night before. That rarely meant home.

"I'm not really a Buddhist, I just like how they see things. Get rid of desire and you can be happy."

"But I love my desires. Me and my desires are real tight! We just spent last night having a grand old time!"

"And on that TMI I gotta go and make sure this places doesn't die on me," Ricky said. "Later, Graff. You're buying me dinner btw."

"Of course! Later, Ickle Ricky!" she quipped before hanging up.

Holding his phone Ricky knew exactly who would end up paying for dinner. It seemed that for the past couple of years the only time Rayanne called was when she needed something. Not that he minded, she was one of his oldest friends and he would do anything for her. He kinda owed it to her, not sure he would have gotten through all the shit in high school without her.

Shaking himself he remembered there was another call he'd been meaning to make. They were seriously understaffed like always and he could use an assistant. While Ricky was all for giving newbies a chance in the other departments he needed someone who knew their stuff when it came to helping him.

He punched in a number and waited while it rang.

Delia Krakow wasn't chasing down drunken actors but she would have seen it as the same thing as she tried to keeping her two boys from killing each other and reasonable fed. She and Ricky had laughed many times over how similar their days were sometimes, dealing with people who would put anything into their mouths, asked never ending inane question and couldn't get dressed without help it seemed.

With her two boys both being under the age of six she couldn't wait until the next year when her five year old Joey started kindergarten easing the burden on her a bit. While her two year old Henry wouldn't start for years she was already picturing a time when she could take an hour in the afternoon for herself where she didn't have to worry about a child breaking themselves or something else.

Right now she was trying to feed her children who seemed to think that their shirts and the floor needed it a lot more than they did.

Joey started trying to make it look like he was eating his oatmeal by smooshing it into the sides of the bowl but was only making it overflow the rim and plop on the table top. Delia who was trying to feed Henry his breakfast told him to stop playing with his food and eat it if he wanted to watch cartoons after.

Joey knowing an empty threat when he heard it just kept on smooshing his oatmeal. Only with promises he could have a Popsicle after did he deign to actually put some food into his mouth.

When the phone rang Henry chose that moment to spit a mouthful of milky oatmeal into Delia's face. It took all her will not to swear as she got the phone and a dish towel. At least she didn't have to worry about her clothes as she was wearing her "mom outfit" of a tee-shirt and track pants. When she saw it was Ricky a smile smoothed out the hard lines on her face and she looked closer to the age they had met then to the 31 going on 40 she usually looked.

"Hey, Ricky," she said, propping the phone into her shoulder as she cleaned down herself and Henry. The table would wait until the kids were out of the way. No sense doing it twice.

"Hey, D. how's my favourite Mum?"

Cleaning oatmeal that had somehow gotten in her two-year-old's hair while she wasn't looking said, "oh just peachy. Mornings are always so easy." She said glad her children hadn't picked up the fine art of sarcasm yet. She heard a pause in the line as if it had cut out for a second. "Is that your other line?"

"Yeah but it can wait," Ricky said. 'I just wanted to ask if you were up for assisting this Saturday. Its opening night and I can already see about fifty million things going wrong."

Delia's smile broadened and without noticing, tucked her long auburn locks behind one ear. She loved helping at the theatre with Ricky who said she was the only girl he knew who could get away with "long auburn locks" and not be a cliché. It was the only time she really got out of Three Rivers or even the house that wasn't connected to her family in some way. She loved her family deeply and couldn't picture life without them but sometimes she just needed time for herself. She was never really sure Brian got that. Ricky did and always asked her for help first. It always made her feel special.

"I'll have to see if I can offload the kids but if I can I'm all yours!" she said, adding a teasing undertone.

"Oh yeah? All mine? So I can do anything I want with you?" he asked, lowering his voice to an exaggerated degree.

Turning from her kids and doing her best phone sex voice "not only anything but anytime, anywhere…" she crooned.

Ricky burst out laughing until something crashed in the back ground and he said he had to go but to get back to him when she knew.

"Will do, Ricks. Talk to you later. This call will be billed to your phones provider." She added with a giggle.

Ricky was laughing as he hung up.

She gave a laughing sigh and looked back at her children who for a wonder were not anymore dirty then when she had turned her back. Joey was doing his best to make Henry laugh with funny faces. Henry giggled and clapped with those piercing shrieks that only children can use call laughter. Delia just watched for a moment. This was why in her darkest of dark moments she didn't just pack up and go. Afterwards she was always so ashamed of those thoughts and hated herself for them, but while they held her she wondered what the point of it all was. Cleaning the messes, making the food, a husband who was rarely home and even when he was seemed distant. Why bother?

Then she heard her children laugh together and knew she could never actually leave and wished she could be a better mom.

Speaking of better moms….Delia pushed her luck with her boys that they wouldn't create any havoc and called the number of the best mom she knew her age. She wouldn't pawn off her monsters on anyone but the best.

As it rang she thought, _"How that woman handles five kids and works is beyond me."_

Elton John drifted out of the radio in Sharon Cherski's kitchen. While not spotless ("any house that has five kids and a spotless kitchen doesn't exist, we're not the freakin' Huxtables!") all the dishes were washed and drying in the rack. Sharon was enjoying the breeze blowing through her window causing strands of her short hair to tickle her neck. It may not have been as severe as Patty had cut hers but it was much shorter than it was years ago ("this is hair on my head, not vines for you cute little monkeys to hang on!").

Her youngest, Lisa, was contently humming to herself and using a crayon to make big purple circles on some paper over a place mat just in case she went past the borders ("I don't know why she loves doing that for hours but I literally get down and praise Jesus every night that she does!"). The rest of her kids were safely off to school and Kyle safely off to work. When Sharon had gotten pregnant in school everyone, even Sharon herself, was surprised how the football star had stepped up and took responsibility. Seeming just another dumb jock he had amazed her by not only sticking around but growing up fast, going as far as getting a job right away and threatening to drop out of school.

Until their parents had gotten wind of it that was and all hell had broken loose. Sharon thought her father would have another heart attack. She had actually been kicked out of her own house and spent a week at the Chases till her parents had calmed down (or Patty had talked to them, she had never gotten a straight answer on which it was) and they said both of them were staying in school and getting actual good jobs if they were really doing this.

They both finished high school and even college while family and friends helped out. Sharon never forgot for a minute how lucky she had been.

She was already folding the first load of laundry for the day at the same table as her youngest when the phone rang. She ruffled her daughter's hair as she reached past her, getting swatted at like a fly ("that child acts like it was HER wiping and powdering MY ass less than a year ago!").

She got the phone off the wall and said "This is the Cherski/Vinnovich residence, how may I help you?"

"Are you still Cherski? How are you not married yet?" Delia said into the phone as if she didn't know perfectly well.

"I'm feeling totally generous this morning so I'll tell you as I've told you like a bazillion times before," Sharon said in mock exasperation. "When Kyle and I find a few grand just laying around in an envelope that says 'blow me on a party' we will so very get married but until then we're living in sin."

"The neighbours must talk about you to no end," Delia teased.

"PFFT! Yeah right!" Sharon scoffed. "The ones on the left are too busy not getting divorced even though it's so obvious they can't stand the sight of each other. I don't think they even sleep in the same bed anymore! They just 'happened' to want a second one for their spare room after they had that screaming match a couple weeks ago. They act all nice in public but you can see they're dead inside. And the ones on the right are ok but I swear if that son of theirs stared any harder Mary's boobs her bra would catch on fire."

"Well she is the inheritor of the 'best global endowments' in Three Rivers," Delia teased about a poll taken of the girls in their high school.

"Oh please don't I know it. Kyle still can't keep his hands off mine! Why do you think we have five kids? If he hadn't gotten that vasectomy we would have six more by now!"

Delia laughed hard at that understanding and even a little jealous. "I wish Brian was still as interested in mine like that." She confessed.

"Tape some computer chips over your nipples and I'm sure he'll come running."

Delia laughter turned sour thinking it probably wasn't that far from fact and asked "you're not afraid of neighbour kid knocking up Mary like you?"

"Oh I had a good long talk with Mary about sex when she was fourteen," Sharon stated. "She hated it. I hated it. But that girl is not getting preggers while in high school! I totally said to her I would love her and support her in anything she does or anything that happens to her but if she gets a bun in the oven before twenty-five somebody is getting shived!"

Sharon waited quietly while Delia tried to catch her breath after that one. She liked making Delia laugh. She would never say it to the girl herself but she thought that when it came down to it, Delia could have done better than Brain Krakow who had treated her like crap before they were married and seemed to being going for the gold in "acting crappy" after. In Sharon's opinion Delia could have been so much more than just a stay at home mom who had put on ten pounds and had bags under her eyes.

"I'm totally sure you had a reason for calling, right?" Sharon said in a snarky voice both knew she didn't mean. Her daughter was rolling onto her stomach on her chair to wiggle onto the floor.

"Hold on," she said into the phone then to Lisa. "Where you going, sweety?"

Her daughter looked at Sharon with what she swore was haughty disdain and lisped "bathroom" before toddling off.

"Her majesty had to use the potty," Sharon said back into the phone. "I swear that girl has more attitude then all my other kids combined! I'd do something but how do you tell your three year old to stop being a cynical little bitch?" she whispered the last part, laughing herself now.

"I'm sure you'll find a way," Delia giggled. "And I called cause Ricky wants me to help him Saturday at the playhouse and I needed a sacrifice….I mean babysitter," she mock corrected.

"Ooooh," Karen drew out. "Going to see the other man are we?"

Sharon could almost her Delia rolling her eyes as she said "nothing's going on Cherski. He's gay!"

"Doesn't mean you don't want in those tight leather pants of his."

Delia admitted to herself she did like those pants on him but said out loud "god, you'd think with all the sex you have you wouldn't think about other people having it so much."

"So there is sex going on?" Sharon said, ears perking. She had been kidding before but if something really was going on….

"No, Sharon. Nothing. Nothing with Ricky. Barely anything with Brian. And now I gotta go, Joey got bored and decided oatmeal wall art is his true calling," Delia sighed.

Sharon laughed and said, "ok, and sure I can watch your two, just let me know when you're bringing them over. Don't have any classes that day." If Sharon's temporary teaching agency called she would just say she couldn't make it. They may need the money but friends and family came first.

Right then Lisa started howling about no toilet paper on the roll and Sharon said she had to go to.

As she was down the hall she heard the phone ring again but headed on to help Lisa who was having a fit. She would check the messages when she got back.

Hallie Lowenthal was staring at her ceiling but not really seeing it. All her attention was focused on what was happening beneath the covers and between her legs. Graham had woken up early and so had "the whisk master" as he liked to call it sometimes, always getting a laugh out of her. Being almost in their sixties they obviously didn't get it on like teenagers and sometimes Graham had to take his little blue pill but sometimes….sometimes nature threw Graham a bone and he always used it wisely.

Though right now he wasn't using his bone but his tongue, making him unable to talk when the phone rang. It could have been an important business call for either of them so she picked it up, trying, unsuccessfully, to push Graham's head away.

"Hello?" she said with as much grace as she could with waves of pleasure pulsing directly from her clit through the rest of her body.

There was a slight pause before a quiet voice asked, "can I talk to my dad?"

A sharper jolt of pleasure hit her, making her press her thighs around Graham's head. "Oh, hi, Angela." She said, keeping her voice neutral. "How are you?"

"Fine," came the short response. "Can I talk to my dad?" she repeated.

Halley was very, VERY close so instead of hitting Graham on the head to get his attention said, "He's a little busy right now, honey. Can he call you back in half an hour?"

There was another short pause and then she said in a flat voice, "sure, if I'm here. Just tell him…" she paused again as if trying to get the words right. "…just say I love you and to come by later."

"Ok, sweety," the pulses were really getting close now. "I gotta go but I'll give him your message."

"Bye," Angela said and then hung up.

Hallie let out the breath she had been holding and let her orgasm wash over her, her thighs closing even tighter as Graham worked her through it.

When Hallie's thighs had loosened into jelly, Graham climbed up between them, laying kisses along her body as he went. He emerged from under the covers, a goofy grin on his slick face. Hallie sometimes wished she had known him when he was younger because she could picture him as a dorky kid with a bad haircut and that exact same smile on his face after doing something he was proud of.

She was just starting to feel the "whisk master" slowly inching its way into her when she said "Angela just called and said to come by later and that she loves you."

Graham paused. He had faintly heard the phone ring but didn't know it had been his daughter calling. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked exasperated. "I would have talked to her."

"Well you were a little busy," she said testily. "I was pushing on your head but you were stuck to me. It was all I could do to sound like I wasn't getting head."

"You probably just didn't want an interruption," he said back. Both of their tones were verging from annoyed to angry but that didn't stop Graham cock from stiffening more and sliding into Hallie.

Hallie failed at suppressing a moan, saying "yeah, cause having your daughter hear us doing it was really how I wanted to start my day!"

Graham was sure he probably said something just as snarky back but really his higher brain wasn't working all that well as he started to stroke in and out of his wife. Patty and him had fought a lot, especially towards the end of his first marriage to her but this was somehow different. Somehow this fighting was more about how much they cared about each other rather just proving who was right.

"Oh god, Graham," Hallie gasped. She was still sensitive from her last orgasm and was quickly climbing again on Graham's steady, deep strokes, his hips swirling every few thrusts. She remembered having to break Graham of many bad habits when they had started to sleep together. Ok, maybe "bad habits" was harsh but geeze, Patty must have been like a clock work machine in bed. One time before slowly educating him she had actually timed each part of his lovemaking and was amazed to see each "section" was almost down to the second. Five minutes kissing on lips, followed by three on the neck. Take exactly one minute to kiss down her body for seven minutes of oral before coming back up for about fifteen minutes of straight of no frills in and out. After one minute of cuddling he was asleep. Whole thing was half an hour almost to the second.

Graham was a changed man now as he plucked at her nipples and nibbled her earlobe like he knew she liked. Not too long later but definitely not timed she was cumming with her husband not too far behind.

He could only snuggle for a second before he had to get up and head to the restaurant they owned together. He had new recipes he wanted to try out before the lunch rush showed up.

He was thinking that Angela probably just had a leaky faucet and wanted him to fix it. Recently she had seemed to be more and more inclined to call him when something went wrong instead of trying to fix it herself. He remembered when it seemed like she had been bursting to get out, live life and do things on her own. Now she called her father if her fridge was making a weird noise or if the domed light in her kitchen blew.

She bounced from job to job and hobby to hobby, never finding anything to her liking. Graham had supported her when she had dropped out of college because she wanted to "find" herself and didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. Hallie said she had been exactly like Angela at that age and some people just needed more time than others to figure it out.

Graham kissed a sleepy and smiling Hallie on the head before heading out. She didn't need to get to work for another couple hours. They had split it up so he ran everything in the back and she ran the front and so far it worked perfectly and he was glad she had bullied him into taking the leap in the first place to open a restaurant.

He was in his car and at the foot of his driveway thinking he would visit Angela later in the evening. He had given himself the night off to kick back and relax, maybe go out with Neil. There would be plenty of time later…

As he sat there with his blinker on for a right hand turn to the restaurant he idled quietly for a moment. He didn't know why he suddenly turned left towards his daughter's apartment building. There really was no reason but a faint feeling that heading over sooner rather than later would be better.

Angela Chase cradled the phone in the silence of her apartment. The only sound was the gentle hum of her fridge in the kitchen behind her. She sat at the end of her couch staring at the phone with no expression on her face and no thought in her head for all of two seconds. She relished the quiet in her mind while it lasted. It seemed like her mind never shut up. The voice in her head was always ticking away about her life, her job, her friends, her boyfriend. Thing was that she didn't have any of those things and her mind never let her forget it.

She drifted into her bedroom and stood in the doorway. There was nothing in it. It had her bed, her clothes, an old TV that didn't work anymore, but it felt completely empty. Like no matter how many nights she had slept her she never left an imprint. Her old home had life in it. Before her parents had divorced and sold the house it had felt so full of life. Even when she was alone in it she had always felt like her dad was on the kitchen making dinner, her mom was talking with Camille upstairs or her sister was just around the corner spying on her. Like their personalities, their souls had sunk into the very walls like silly putty.

This room, this whole apartment was empty, flat and smooth. It was just her in a vacuum. She found herself constantly returning to a room again only to pause and wonder if she had really been in it a few minutes ago, it seemed so empty. She had even tried Feng Shui when she had worked for an interior designer. It was like the walls had absorbed the hollowness from the rest of her like. Like it was a cancer slowly spreading to everything. What was that word she'd learned in nursing? Metastasized. Her fucking hollow, malignant life had metastasized.

Angela went to her bed and stripped off the sheet off. She dragged it behind her like a tail as she left and went back to her couch to sit down, starting to twist and knot the sheet. You found pretty much anything on the internet. Anything except how to fix something you didn't have. How do you even fix a life when you didn't have one?

As her hands worked she thought about how high school was supposed to be the beginning of her life. She had made new friends, went to parties, crushed on Jordan Catalano, made out in the boiler room but at the end of it all looking back she had nothing to show for it. She felt just as empty and alone coming out as she did going in.

College had been no different and she had eventually dropped out. She couldn't even figure out what made her happy day to day, how was she supposed to know what would make her happy for the rest of her life. All through high school, they told you what to do and how it should be done and suddenly they say "ok, now choose what to do for the rest of your lives, cause if you don't choose now then you'll, like, end up in the gutter before dying a horrible death hooked on crack."

She barely knew how to keep the friends she had, let alone a job. She always quit before too long, just not seeing herself doing it for the rest of her lives. It all seemed so fake. When she worked at the accounting firm she felt like if she blew hard enough all those people she worked with would all blow away like leaves.

She'd thought about burning a new workplace down more than once. If for no other reason than to feel something. Something other than hollow.

The friends who had always seemed to listen to her and be there for her went off and got their own lives. They had jobs, families, people they could count on. She had called everyone she knew. People who might "talk her down" about what she was going to do. But not one of them had answered. Not one. Only Hallie had answered and from the way her breath was going Angela was pretty sure her dad was "slipping the salami" as Rayanne liked to say sometimes.

She hadn't called her mom. She was already disappointed enough in her own life without her mother's help.

She finished tying her sheet and went out to her balcony. She lived on the eighth floor and looked out at the view of Three Rivers without really seeing it. She knew it by heart anyway. The vacuum of her life centered here. She could never get out. Never do anything right. Her freaking little sister had a better life. She had a great life actually.

Angela locked that thought away and stepped onto a chair, the only thing on her balcony. She reached up with the sheet and knotted it around the bottom of the railings of the balcony above. For a moment she hung out over empty air, looking down, thinking how she could just let go of her hold. She was only pressing against the bottom of the floor above. So easy to ease up and fall forward. But she didn't. She hadn't been able to do anything or get anything right and she was going to have this. This one thing. She was going to do this her way.

One of the only real secrets that she had ever had was that the first time she had seen someone hanging it had affected her deeply. She couldn't even remember what it was she had been watching now but seeing it for the first time had made her feel something that could only be described as awe.

When people died, if their bodies weren't torn apart like paper, they always looked as if they belonged there. Like they had decided to just lie down and have a nap wherever they were. People who slit their wrists in the tub looked like they had fallen asleep taking a bath in wine. Or snoozing in a running car in their garage. Even when they shot themselves in the head if you ignored the blood they looked almost natural lying there by a spent gun.

Only with hanging did it seem different. There you have this person, suspended by the neck over the ground. A position you would never find a person in. As soon as you see them you know they're dead. Your brain may lock up, you may deny what you see but a deep part of you that still believes in closet monsters knows its seeing something horrible.

Hanging is so unnatural. A statement to the world that I reject you from its very posture of defying gravity. If suicide was saying I reject life, hanging was like saying I reject not just life but the laws that govern nature and reality. It says I won't play your game anymore and you can no longer affect me. You can no longer hurt me.

She knotted the sheet carefully then slipped the makeshift noose over her head, tightening it until it was already hard to breath. She lifted one leg, then the other over the railing and sat on it, bracing her feet against the rails that went down into the cement. She waited for a moment. She wasn't sure for what. The wind gusted and rippled her plain flowered dress. It was the one she had worn the first time she had talked to Jordan at that party she lied to her parents about to go to. She didn't know why it seemed fitting, but it did.

She took a deep breath as her tears started to spill, strands of her bright red hair getting caught in the tracks. She had dyed it just last night. Crimson Glow.

Angela Chase took one more breath. Held it. And leaned forward.

She fell.


End file.
